Emergency Bathroom Reno!

Last Sunday night during Jacob's bath, I thought to myself that it was certainly time to give the shower walls a good scrub - it had been much too long since I last did that. It's not my favourite job by any means so it regularly is neglected.

After Jacob's bath, it was Logan's turn. I took Jacob into his room, put on his pjs and sat down to nurse him before bed. During this time, Scott sat in the bathroom with Logan while he bathed. As I was sitting in the rocker, feeding Jacob, I heard something splash into the tub and some choice words come out of Scott's mouth.

When I finished feeding Jacob, I laid him down and went into the bathroom to see what the commotion was about. The following is what I found...

Yes, a section of three tiles, pulled off the wall by a suction cup!

The bath toys are stored in a bag which can be hung on the wall with suction cups. Logan likes to put the bag on the wall and then pull it off. Last Sunday, he pulled too hard I guess, it all came down! At that point, at least I knew I no longer had to clean.

The wall in behind the tiles was really wet and we soon realized that many of the other tiles were also loose. Concluding that everything would need to be taken down and redone. Not an easy feat with 2 small people in the house but needing to be done quickly since we only have 1 shower in the house. (Although we've always planned to put a shower in the basement...at this point, we really wished we had!)

We headed out to Home Depot on Monday night and bought what we needed for a quick (but proper) reno of the tub surround. I made arrangements for the boys and I to stay at my parent's house for the weekend so that Scott could get the work done without his little helper.

We did continue to use the shower since we figured we couldn't make it much worse than it already was.

The hole covered up to protect what was behind it. Notice how much condensation had developed behind the plastic from the wetness of the wall.

A "before" shot of taps and shower head. One thing I always hated was the fact that the old tiles didn't go all the way to the ceiling.

My mom came and picked up the boys and I on Thursday afternoon where we would stay until further notice from Scott. When Scott arrived home from work on Thursday, he started the demolition.

All the tiles removed, revealing the wet drywall which was even moldy at the bottom, ew.

All the drywall removed, now just the block wall. The block wall was also a bit damp by dry by morning.

The plumbing also needed to be replaced since it was old as well.

The plan for Friday was to get the new cement board up (there was no cement board before which was part of the problem, says Scott) and as much tiling done as possible.

New cement board.

More cement board.

The start of tiling. The trick is to lay the tiles from the centre out.

We chose big tiles to make it go faster and a blue accent piece to spice it up a bit.

All the tiling was finished on Friday night.

When I talked to Scott on Friday night, I was pleased to learn that all the had left to do on Saturday was the grouting so we'd be able to come back home Saturday afternoon. So when he got up in the morning he did the grouting and put the (new) taps and shower head on.

The finished product at the top.

A close up of the blue accent.

The new taps.

The two walls meeting - it's so shiny!

A view of the finished product!

We're still not able to use it as the grout needs to be sealed on Tuesday but it looks great. Scott worked hard to get it done quickly.

The bathroom wasn't on the top of our list of things that needed to be done but looking at it now, we could certainly use a new medicine cabinet, new vanity...home renovations NEVER end!